Phones seem to optimize for the fastest network instead of network quality. At least on Android it's possible to manually override and select a network through the hidden settings menu accessible through the phone dialler. Just hit ##4636## and you're in.
From the graph in the article it is pretty evident that the margins are very low compared to other countries. This is a case of the government doing something that makes sense for the growth of the country rather than letting privately run companies make large profits.
OpenStreetMaps is getting there. Heavily depends on the quality of maps in your area. For Youtube, you could use something like invidio.us or newpipe, which shows you only the channels that you have subscribed to.
You don't need to. Just use apps that do not need Google Play Services. F-Droid helps out with that. I don't miss anything since almost all services I need to use have very good mobile websites. I'm glad I'm not unknowingly sharing a bunch of my data with them.
I'm really hoping that Chat over IMAP picks up. I use Delta Chat every now and then with some journalists who have it installed, and it just makes so much sense. We already have everyone's mail ID's anyway. Or at least I thought so. In countries like India, a large number of people have skipped email and gone to phone based services. So for Chat over IMAP to succeed over here it would need to have phone number based matching cos people do not use their mail ID's at all. Everything gets done over whatsapp.
200m is incredibly short. I'd say the average in Bangalore is around 700metres. It varies from 500m in dense parts of the city to 1.5km in the not so dense parts.
Why not loop through different streaming services through the year? Have only a single subscription at a time. The friction to sign up for a streaming service is minimal compared to getting a new cable connection. Of course, this would require that one be willing to wait to watch the latest episode of a show.
There isn't. I have had to self host Gotify to send myself push notifications cos some proprietary apps do not have support to keep an always on connection to the server.
They already do this heavily in India. Mostly due to a lack of good road signage. Landmarks are what defined navigation. Where I live (Bangalore), we have junctions named after KFC and Sony, cos those stores have been there for so long.
OSM has better data in certain aspects. The big problem with OSM is not about the data, but that it isn't designed to be used as a map. When someone visits osm.org, it is very barebones and the search feature doesn't work very well to find places unless you know the syntax. The team working on OSM themselves say that OSM is not a map, but instead a database.
Anyway, Google would never have gotten the data that it has without the contributions of the people. And the dedicated mappers in my city have all turned to OSM now. Hence leading to better mapping in terms of road data, bicycle paths and other features that businesses do not care about mapping.
The irony is strong with this one considering a lot of Government apps do not work without Google Play Services. Including incredibly popular payment apps like BHIM which was developed by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India). I know cos I have a phone without Play Services and using Government apps is out of question. Thankfully, there are web alternatives for all servuces